Henry said, ‘I dare say I can find it myself. Don’t trouble.’ He walked out.
After a moment, Brown said, ‘I’d better go,’ and followed him. Gelis gazed after them both. If Henry knew Nicholas was here, he would know that Jodi was with him.
Leithie Preston said, ‘They should have drowned that one at birth.’
It was a common view. On the other hand, all the Prestons talked like that. They were a strong-minded family. Gelis said, ‘I don’t know. I expect they said that of all of us at that age. I think we should find him a girlfriend.’
‘Lang Bessie,’ said Cochrane. ‘If he can afford her. What are you grinning at?’
‘Man,’ said Leithie Preston, ‘if ye could hear the note in your voice. Mope away. Yon same wee rutting bantling’s hardly been out of Lang Bessie’s skirts since that time with Johndie Mar and the pig-asses. And according to rumour, it’s her that pays him.’
The loading finished. Tam and Leithie left. Gelis went to the office and became lost in the paperwork. No one came. The guard who always protected her eventually tapped on the door and brought in one of Tom Yare’s men, with a bit of paper and a message. The message, from Yare, was to say that the Marie had sailed, taking Ser Nicholas and the two young men with it. The note, from Nicholas, said, Gelis, I’m sorry. Only to Berwick, and I’ll bring him back safe.
He had reassured her about Jodi. Perhaps he didn’t realise how disturbed she felt about Henry as well. It seemed puerile, after all that, to experience a sudden, deep pang at her next thought, which was that she was bereft of her lover, for the first time since she had found him again.
THE THOUGHT HAD occurred to Nicholas also, inducing a surge of involuntary protest that perhaps even exceeded her own. But it was too good a chance to forgo. He knew it as soon as he saw Henry approaching, his fair face upraised, and Alec pointing to where Yare stood at the top of the companionway, with Jodi beside him. They were in the outermost part of the harbour, and would cast off when Brown was aboard, and Nicholas and Jodi had left. The gangplank shifted up and down as the ship swayed. The Marie was big as Leith ships went: a hundred tons, requiring sixteen mariners to handle the sails and the oars and the freight. There was a pilot boat waiting to ease her out of the shallows.
Henry was on board. He spoke to Yare, and then glanced at Jodi, throwing him a word as he passed. Jodi said something, looking after him. Then Yare had taken Henry by the shoulder and was directing his gaze to the top of the mast, where Nicholas rocked. Nicholas waved, without moving, and Yare shouted up. It was something about tides, but it didn’t matter. Ten minutes wouldn’t hurt. He had climbed to the basket, as he often did, to give himself a last view of the ship, and the wharves, and the port. Of these, as he sometimes recognised, it was the ship that meant most to him. These last weeks he had been surprised—and shamed by the surprise—to find that it was the same with Jodi. With both of the boys, he was beginning to think.
He leaned out, signalling, and when Yare sent up a man, dispatched him back with an invitation. Would Henry like to join him aloft? There was room. There was room for more than Henry.
Now there were two faces peering up. Then came Jodi’s young voice, and a movement. Jodi had repeated the invitation to Henry, and Henry had suggested, languidly, that if Jodi’s father wanted company, Jodi should ascend. Which, as it happened, was no trouble to a boy whose father had a ship and a house and a warehouse in Leith. Jodi laid hands on the ropes and swarmed up.
He didn’t look down, but Nicholas, handing him up the last foot, saw Henry’s expression. He saw it alter. And, as, breathless and proud, Jodi settled beside him, Nicholas saw Henry begin the long climb.
He had done it before. Living on the Atlantic island of Madeira, he must have spent half his leisure on the ships of what had once been the cane-sugar company of Vasquez and St Pol, and which Simon de St Pol still ran in the Portuguese island. Henry would have climbed rigging, but of a different kind of ship, and in calm, blue waters. And not perhaps for a year. It was a gamble. But against that was the co-ordinated, beautiful body, and the will-power, and the pride.
Henry de St Pol was pale when he arrived, but he arrived. And Nicholas, pulling him in as if his own breathing had not stopped, began talking at once of the rigging, the cargo, the sailing qualities, punctuated after a moment by breathless comments from Henry, and Jodi’s eager voice. Then Yare shouted again, from below, and Nicholas said, ‘Mind you, it’s even better out at sea, but perhaps not with this wind.’
‘I’ve been out in worse,’ Henry said.
‘I suppose we all have,’ Nicholas said. ‘But if we sail, we couldn’t get off until Berwick. The King would dismiss you.’
‘I have three days free,’ Henry said. ‘More, if I wanted. I could send a message.’ His knuckles were white, his eyes dark.
Nicholas said, ‘Wait a moment. No clothes! And Jodi and I were going home.’
‘I like Berwick,’ said Jodi. ‘Master Yare or Master Brown would have clothes.’
Nicholas looked at them, frowning. ‘Dammit,’ he said. ‘Shall we sail?’
The ship leaned over and back. ‘I don’t mind,’ Henry said.
NICHOLAS DIDN’T KEEP them long on the top: only for so long as it took for the Marie to edge out of the Water of Leith and head south. Then he took them below and remarked that he was hungry. So were they. Jodi said, ‘I’ll tell Master Yare,’ and went off.
Nicholas, peeling off his boat-cloak beside Henry, said, ‘Thank God he’s reasonably good at this stuff. You don’t mind keeping an eye on him? You must have done a lot of small-boat sailing as well. What’s the water like round Funchal?’
Then food came, and ale which Henry rather indulged in, so that when Nicholas, his meal over, left to make a quick round of the ship, he returned to find the representative of the King’s Guard fast asleep on a bench, with someone’s old cloak wrapped about him. Tom Yare had carried off Jodi.
Tom Yare said, ‘No, I don’t mind, and neither does Alec. But I thought the St Pols were after your hide? You might woo the boy, if you’re lucky, but what if something goes wrong? Accidents happen. If Henry is buried at sea, his grandfather will have you buried on land.’
‘You sound as if you can’t sail this ship,’ Nicholas said. ‘Nothing will happen. Neither are we going to fall in love and marry each other in three days. Henry may not commit actual murder, but he’ll still offend the crew, and madden Alec and you, and snap at me or Jodi whenever he’s worried. On the other hand—’
‘I know. You can’t help admiring him. There were sixteen men down here watching the style of him as he worked up those ropes, however nervous he was. A comely man draws the eye, and makes men lenient.’
‘All right,’ Nicholas said. ‘So long as no one gets too excited. His grandfather will bury me also if he finds I’ve diverted his line by implanting a new taste for sailors.’
All his predictions were correct. He kept Jodi beside him, so that he had some protection when Henry lost his nerve or his temper. But Henry let fly with his tongue, not his sword or his fists, and never at any time was Veere mentioned, or anything that had happened between Henry and Nicholas in the past. And Jodi had been well primed. When an argument arose, he just opened his grey eyes on Henry and said, ‘I don’t agree,’ and walked out. And when Henry said, ‘Oh yes! Run to your father!’ Jodi just said, ‘Well, you’re older than me.’ And quite often that silenced him.
The best times were the times of danger when, triumphant after some crisis, Henry would joke with the crew, as he heard his captain joke with the Guard after a contest, and join Tom or Alec or Nicholas over a tankard in the cabin and talk it all over. Once Nicholas said, ‘Does everyone call you Henry? No short name?’
‘There aren’t any,’ the youth said. ‘Or just Harry, which is all right if you’re blind. It’s a van Borselen name.’ He stared Nicholas in the eye.
‘Well, I think I prefer it to Wolfaert,’ said Nicholas mildly. ‘I suppose you’re right.
All the good Henry names are Italian. But remember the problem, when you come to baptise your first son.’ He added, with vague hopefulness, ‘There was some talk of trailing a bladder, and shooting at it, for money?’
‘You think you can beat me?’ said Henry.
‘Jodi can beat you,’ said Nicholas scornfully. Henry was beginning to recognise jokes.
In fact, Jodi was remarkably good: so much so that Henry remarked tolerantly, ‘You’ve been practising.’
‘No. It’s your bow,’ Jodi said. ‘I brought it with me. That’s what I’m shooting with.’ He paused. ‘You don’t want it back? Aunty Bel said you didn’t.’
‘Aunty Bel?’ Henry repeated. It was sharp.
‘Mistress Bel. Not his real aunt,’ Nicholas said. ‘Bel of Cuthilgurdy.’
‘I don’t imagine she’s anybody’s real aunt,’ Henry said. ‘And if she was ever a Cuthilgurdy, it was forty years ago, my grandfather says. The land’s long since gone to somebody else. So how do you know her? Because she used to hang about my father’s sister?’
‘She went to Timbuktu with us. You were too young, perhaps, to remember. You would have enjoyed it.’
‘I’ve been to Africa,’ Henry said.
‘Jodi hasn’t. Where?’ Nicholas asked.
Later, they fished.
Later, Henry settled down to dice with the crew, and lost badly, and accused them of cheating. Later, he either ignored Jodi or sneered at him. Then the wind rose to gale force, and they lost a spar and had to cut a sail free and Alec broke open a keg of strong ale and they were all uproarious again.
Up and down; up and down. No, they were not going to fall in love and marry between Leith and Berwick; but at least they arrived in Berwick, all of them, rather soiled, rather damp, but undamaged in flesh and in spirit. Yare sent Jodi up to his house, from which he and his father would ride home with a good guard next morning. Nicholas stood with his other son on the riverside quay, watching the partial unloading begin. He said, ‘You don’t fancy sailing on to Middleburg? It would let you mend fences with Veere. Wolfaert can be an ass, but he’s quite a powerful man in these parts. Or you could sell your fells directly to Antwerp.’
‘You want to know what the competition is?’ Henry said. He turned from the river, his blue eyes held wide, as if by some new resolution. He said, ‘I heard you tried to drown my father’s sister at Berecrofts. I heard you thought it was my father, and held her under the water.’
‘I was there when she drowned,’ Nicholas said. ‘She tried to cross a frozen river in snow. Why do you think I would kill her, or your father?’
Henry said, ‘Because you wanted to be one of us.’
Nicholas said, ‘I wouldn’t have minded being one of you, although not for the inheritance. I had enough money. But in fact, I couldn’t be a St Pol without harming my own family, and I wouldn’t do that. If I were one of you, my marriage would be void, because my wife and your mother were sisters.’
‘So that wasn’t why you wanted to kill my father,’ said Henry. ‘It was because he knew what a slut your mother was. He was a boy when he was made to marry her, and she cheated. Everyone knew.’
Men shouted; horns blew; winches creaked. If you listened, you could hear the surf far away on the sandbanks. Nicholas said, ‘Everyone believed it, certainly. Your father and grandfather made sure of that. I think they had their reasons.’
‘I’m sure they had,’ Henry said. He laughed.
Nicholas said, ‘I meant that your father was fifteen when he married, and my mother was nearly twice as old, with a child on the way. He probably felt trapped and resentful. Does it matter? I have my own wife and son. I have no designs on your family. I was hoping that you would talk about it, like this, so that I could tell you so.’
Up, and down. Henry said, ‘You think I want to hear your pathetic excuses? Pardon me. You’ve dragged me on this squalid trip, and that’s enough. You won’t, I hope, expect me to come back in your company.’
‘No. Do you want me to lend you some money?’ Nicholas said. ‘I did better than you did out of the cockroach championship.’
Henry’s blue eyes gleamed. Then he said, ‘Go to hell,’ and walked off.
Up, and down. But his welcome back home, after the busy, talkative journey with Jodi, was worth it all. Ah, his welcome.
HIS FEAST DAY came and went, signalling that he was about to become a year older. On the Eve of St Nicholas, there was a Mass at the Abbey Church of Holyrood, and Sandy Albany gave a feast for him in the royal apartments. Ten days later, on the day he stubbornly maintained as the anniversary of his birth, Kathi provided a repast, pleasantly set out for him and for Gelis in the big upper room of her Canongate house, and shared with an amazing number of the persons whom he knew and liked best, including those who set to noisy music, on demand, the scurrilous words written by Robin on the underside of their platters. And among the adults were the children whose lives were now also part of his own: Margaret of Berecrofts, a rosy, formidable character of nearly three, in the patient charge of her adored Jodi, with Rankin pattering behind. And in an upstairs room, brought for the occasion, a wicker cradle containing within its muslin freshness a sleeping infant called Efemie Adorne, with her father’s hand pensively guiding its sway.
Leaving the room, Nicholas had found Kathi just outside, waiting to take him downstairs. He said, ‘He is glad to have her. I was afraid he would resent it.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Mind you, it’s some time since any uncle of mine had a close acquaintance with babies. If she wakes, he will rush out and be replaced by three nurses. Have you heard about Honoria?’
‘It’s going to be something crude,’ he said hopefully. ‘One of the dirtier bits from Davie Simpson’s selections from Ovid?’
‘You are having a good birthday,’ Kathi said. She negotiated the stair and halted on a small landing, whose window gave a view of Tobie’s wing and a courtyard. ‘Don’t you remember Loathsome Ben Bailzie, the assiduous suitor?’
‘No. I knew it was going to be a dirty story,’ said Nicholas. ‘Look. I can see Tobie crossing the courtyard. He’s carrying a duck.’
‘He’s carrying a goose. It’s your present. You must remember Ben Bailzie. He was on my marriage list. He was practically in my marriage-bed. You used to encourage him.’
‘Oh, him!’ Nicholas said. It was a goose. He said, ‘And there’s Clémence. She’s got a goose too.’
‘Well, remember,’ said Kathi with irritation. ‘The Bailzies all want to be rich, and no one ever wants to marry them, so they have a family policy of foisting parenthood on very young virgins of both sexes and then offering nobly to marry them.’
‘It’s a nice thought,’ said Nicholas. ‘But two geese? Anyway, if Ben Bailzie is the fellow I’m thinking of, I’d be amazed if he could seduce a virgin of one sex, never mind two. You aren’t thinking of oysters? They’d go well before geese, if there’s time to cook them before he arrives. Or maybe he’s come?’
‘No,’ said Kathi carefully. She put her hands on the window-sill and sat on it. ‘Honoria has come. Ben Bailzie’s daughter. He got a rich young virgin in the family way and then was reluctantly compelled to marry her. Result, Honoria.’
‘And I encouraged him?’ Nicholas said, dragging his eyes from the geese. ‘You mean, if I’d succeeded, you might be Mistress Katelinje, spouse of Bailzie and precipitate mother of Honoria? Margaret and Rankin wouldn’t like it at all.’
There was a silence, during which Katelinje Sersanders coloured from her brow to her throat, and Nicholas took a breath and then let it out slowly, for he had made the connection; had belatedly realised why she was talking this nonsense. And he was not in a good timber house in the Canongate of Edinburgh at all. He was standing in flickering darkness by the bank of a river, while behind him flames rose from the place of a would-be seduction, attempted by a fierce, lonely man recently dead. Pursued by the same lurid light, Robin, lissom, mobile, an anguished young husband, was seeking help. An
d before Nicholas, lying where she had been carried, was Robin’s wife, Kathi, looking up at Nicholas with the same look in her eyes: the look that even her husband had not yet read.
It was not dark but light, and a matter for joy.
Nicholas said softly, ‘My dear?’
And she said, ‘Yes. You are the second to know. And I want to tell Tobie.’
Then he gave her his hands, and brought her to stand, small and still slight, against him, within his embrace. ‘He must be so proud of you. You must be so happy.’ And when she made a choked sound, he added, practically, ‘And if it is a girl, you must call it Honoria.’
Then she snorted, and wiped her eyes, and stretched up to receive his salute, to be swept aside by the small, solid person of Margaret, dragging Jodi to see her second cousin Euphemia. Nicholas held Kathi steady, while gazing with her at the retreating children. He said, ‘There goes a very happy big-sister-to-be. I like your progeny, Kathi.’
‘So do I. Isn’t it lucky?’ she said.
Down below, rejoining the riotous crowd of their friends, the first thing Nicholas noticed was Robin’s gaze, bright and defiant and proud, fixed on him from afar. He must, then, have sent Kathi to break their news to him quietly, tonight. The best gift, the greatest pledge of friendship he could have devised.
A better time to acknowledge it would be found. But now Nicholas went across swiftly, and knelt, and, unobserved in the uproar, said to Robin what could not wait to be said, so that Robin flushed, and lay back, and laughed with brilliant eyes. Then Nicholas rose, and set out to make his birthday one that everyone there would remember, including himself.
DR TOBIAS BEVENTINI, who now knew and approved of the reason, watched him do it. The guard-geese, which had been bought with considerable trouble, furnished the central motif of the celebration, if not of the table; and Tobie, given over to contentment, enjoyed creating ever more extravagant explanations of their duties and skills. Eventually, watching the birthday guests depart amid a bobbing crowd of servants and torchbearers, with the geese screeching and hissing amongst them, Tobie linked arms with his wife and turned back to where Robin was lying, half-asleep, with Kathi moving softly about him.
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